Eggnog Vanilla Bean Streusel Muffins

How did your weekend go? I hope it was merry, bright, and filled with fresh memories that you’ll want to keep forever! I know that for a small few of you (the scrooges and grinches of the world) today might feel like a relief, but the rest of us this is sort of the saddest day of the year. Then add on top of that the fact that it’s also Monday again and I just think we all could use a muffin this morning, agreed?

Okay, I should probably take back my accusation about you being a grinch if your relieved because I’m honestly feeling just a little bit of that now that the rush of planning and everything is past. Aside from that though, I’m still really sad it’s over. We still have New Year’s coming of course, but personally there’s just no comparison between the two holidays. Christmas is the best! Actually, it’s rare for my family to do much of anything for New Year’s aside from staying up late to ring in the new year. Haha, although this year we may end up doing our family Christmas photos on New Year’s because, following our recent custom, they totally never happened. It’s so hard to organize this big of a group to get photos, but hopefully we can get them done anyway.

So these sweet crumbly muffins, I feel like they’re just the answer you need for all that eggnog you’ve probably got leftover in your fridge. I mean, if you share any of my enthusiasm for the holidays then maybe you’ll understand when I say how downright depressing it is for me to have eggnog around more than a few days after the season ends. Well, and if you aren’t a fan of nog in the first place then maybe you can at least try to imagine feeling that way. Like I said, it’s depressing. Oh, and I guess there’s the possibility that you like eggnog so much that there’s no way you’d ever have it leftover. In that case I bet you can catch a great discount now that the grocery stores will be clearing it out, or maybe you make it at home like I do so you can just whip up some more. Have you ever tried making it, it’s super easy? Here’s my recipe if you want to try it. I love doing it homemade because it’s usually the perfect way to use all my extra egg yolks leftover from making royal icing for my gingerbread each year.

But anyway, the point is that these muffins are worth a try even if you don’t have any eggnog that is “leftover” per se or you don’t need a muffin because you feel sad about the season coming to an end. The flavor vanilla bean compliments the eggnog perfectly and the topping is probably the best part! I’ve said before that muffins without some kind of topping are like less popular cousins of cupcakes and I stand firm in that opinion. There simply has to be streusel on top or no deal.

Okay, I hope you try them and if you do I’d love to know what you think. Have a great last week of the year guys!

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (180 C) and grease a 12-count muffin tin with oil (or line with paper cups if preferred).

Cream butter and sugar for streusel in the bowl of a stand mixer. Add the vanilla bean scrapings, nutmeg, salt, and flour and stir until combined into a crumbly mixture, then add the eggnog and mix until it comes together into a dough. Now scrape out the streusel into a separate bowl and set aside so you can reuse mixing bowl for muffin batter,

Mix the oil and sugar in the bowl. Add egg and eggnog and beat on low until combined. Mix in soda, baking powder, nutmeg, salt, vanilla extract, and vanilla bean scrapings. Mix in flour last until your batter is smooth.

Spoon batter into the slots in prepared pans and fill to the rim (you should get around 9 muffins). Crumble half of your streusel mixture and crumble it over the top of each muffin then place in oven for 10 to 12 minutes, then remove from oven and quickly crumble the rest of your streusel crumb over them, then rotate the pan and return to oven for another 10 to 12 minutes, or until tops are browned and a toothpick comes out clean. Remove from oven and cool for at least 5 minutes the loosen from pan and place on a cooling rack to finish cooling or devour while still warm.

I do it that way because, if you add it all at once it sinks into the batter and gets lost in the finished muffins. By waiting until the muffins are partially done you insure that your tops have a glorious pile of very distinguishable crumb to make your friends jealous. Haha, thanks for asking girl and Happy New Year!